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COH

Last Updated: 11/17/2009

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Status: Single
City: Stockholm
Country: SE
Signup Date: 5/15/2007

Friday, July 31, 2009

IMAGES OF JAPAN
Current mood:

productive
Category: Travel and Places

About the recent visit to Japan.. This time I began in Kyoto with a show at Club Metro the day after arrival. I never have any serious jet-lag so it all went well - mixing some of the freshly recorded heavy-metal guitars into the older material turned out to be fun and sounded quite funky. A dark heavy version of FFFETISH which I came up with during the show left me seriously impressed and charged for the rest of my visit!

I must say I came to Kyoto in good time. The city was celebrating one of the largest old festivals in Japan - Gion Matsuri. You can surely find a lot about this historical event in wikipedia or elsewhere.. Personally I was quite impressed to see how people build these carriages all around the downtown area. It takes a few days of elaborate collective rope work to make the wonder - and they end up looking absolutely beautiful for the parade at the climax of the festival..

[I don't know the guy in the orange shirt]

One of these days a friend took me to a recently open izakaya/restaurant called Yorozu-ya. It is a great place run by a young chef accompanied by a few equally young friends, all of them obviously into electronic music of various kinds. After a small friendly conversation with the chef about my visit [I like to sit at the bar, watching all the cooking], one of the guys emerged from the kitchen with a laptop, having located the last.fm page for COH! I was surprised to no end.. the guys also seemed to be very happy to cook for a "famous" guest. So.. I have been treated very kindly and.. well.. the food was simply amazing [the place is in Karasuma-Oike and is highly recommended, please do take a look at the the website!]

After a few days in the progressively more cheerful Kyoto, I escaped from the busy festival streets to a remote ryokan by the Biwa lake [with a private onsen/hot springs bath on the balcony!]

if only to truly empty and cleanse my "self" before the trip to the busy Tokyo, a city filled over the top with just about everything, a fair amount of evil included [I did not take the risk of checking out what's available for rent at that seemingly quiet place in Ura-Harajuku].

The show at meconopsis went well. I am still hoping to be able to see the video recordings from the evening with a couple of brief improvised dance performances - I was too busy with the computer to see any of that.. Met some old friends, made a few new friends.. [there's going to be some news very soon in relation to this].

On the day after the show a friend invited me to see EeL and Sexy Synthesizer live at o-nest. I admit a few years ago I had a soft spot for EeL's "Little Prince" CD so it was very nice to see the title track performed live and even meet the man behind the crazy music. The show was very funny, with many people hitting the stage to dance around the barely moving [and not very large!] singer.

Return to Kyoto a couple of days later felt very relaxing, Gion Matsuri was peacefully fading away and the city had become quiet again. As if to savour that calm, on the last day I went to have tea at my favourite place here:

[this must be some of the world's best maccha served to a gaijin, and I never saw other people having tea there, which makes the experience even more unique for the well-populated islands]

Soon after I went home.

PS: Here's a romantic SOISONG-inspired portrait taken by a friend in Japan. Pity my band-mate Sleazy wasn't around for that.. and for all the incredible food!